Kent's rant about targeted ads struck a chord - I ignore them whenever possible. However - much of what we receive for free on the internet is financed by advertising. If a significant proportion of us in some way "tune out" the advertising, and click rates start to drop off, what happens next? Do the ads become MORE intrusive, better "targeted" via even more privacy violation ... or do we start paying for services more often? My preference is to vote with my wallet for services I find useful, and avoid ads that way - but I suspect I'm in the minority here (I'll have Kent for company though!).

Longer term, the answer possibly lies with VRM and related personal data management ideas, but these will be a hard sell to people who only look for easy ways to interact on the Web, unless it can be made almost as unnoticeable as the ads we're trying to get rid of. Now there's a challenge ...

24/01/2011

It’s time to wake up and smell the axle-grease: industrial age organizations are finely-tuned engines of efficiency and productivity—but the price is a smallness of ambition, a paucity of purpose, a terminal deficiency of daring to challenge the status quo.

... On the other hand, it is the appetite to cultivate what the status quo considers thoroughly impractical and hopelessly impossible that is the cornerstone of enduring prosperity.

... So here’s my suggestion: this coming year, if it’s possible in the eyes of the status quo, it’s not awesome enough—go back to the drawing board. If your goal is creating an enduring, meaningful advantage, consider a new principle: if your rivals (and some of your peers) don’t think it’s impossible, don’t bother attempting it.

Ouch. A strongly-worded version of the Innovator's Dilemma, Umair takes 'thinking outside the square' to its logical extreme - if you want to differentiate your company or product, then you have to BE different, which will usually means doing something that nobody else is, or wants to ...

23/01/2011

The biggest challenge with deploying Sharepoint isn't that the technology isn't great but that it doesn't challenge deeply held assumptions about what it takes to run a business. It really is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Apart from being an interesting point about Sharepoint, the deeper point is true - as Euan points out, all the technology in the world (even the stuff that's better than SP) won't change old habits and rapidly-deteriorating assumptions about business and how it works these days - changing process, practice and people is required.

21/01/2011

ZDNet artice on the increasing spread of Facebook Connect as the defacto login/security mechanism on websites. Two big problems: Facebook's well-documented privacy and security problems; and the under-the-covers sharing of so much of your personal details on Facebook with the other web sites, and the potential for tracking your Web history. I'll pass ...

04/01/2011

Stutchbury, of course, ignores the inconvenient truth that productivity peaked in the 1990s, when the Keating-era industrial relations system was dominated by collective bargaining at the enterprise level underpinned by strong awards. The rate of productivity growth has been declining ever since: declining through the era of rottweilers on the wharves, declining through the era of near-compulsory AWAs in higher education, the public service, and Government-funded construction projects; declining through the era of a building tribunal with coercive powers; declining through the era of AWAs that could undermine award conditions; declining through an era in which minimum wage setting was given to a new body entirely unsympathetic to the idea of minimum wages’ very existence.

Obligatory Disclaimer

The opinions expressed on these pages are mine, all mine. They may not reflect what my boss, wife, kids or dog think, so don't blame THEM. Any correlation between events on this blog and anything approaching reality will be entirely coincidental, unintended, serendipitous and transitory.